The Satires
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Narrated by:
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David Timson
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By:
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Juvenal
About this listen
The Roman poet Juvenal was the greatest satirist of Imperial Rome. His 16 satires encompass attacks on the immorality, abuses and hypocrisy of the Romans of his day. The last of the great Roman poets, he wrote between CE 110 and 130, his approach to satire coming close to modern expectations of the genre.
Today, Juvenal is best known for the Latin quotations panem et circenses (‘bread and races’–he stated that this was all the Roman populace desired) and mens sana in corpore sano (‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’).
This audiobook, deftly delivered by David Timson, uses Niall Rudd’s translation, which preserves the style and metrical effect of Juvenal’s hexameters.
Public Domain (P)2025 Translation © 1991 Niall Rudd. (P) 2025 Naxos AudioBooks UK Ltd.Juvenal first came to my consciousness about thirty years ago after watching a short documentary fronted by Ian Hislop with Stephen Fry playing the part of Juvenal delivering excerpts of his’ satires to camera (this can be watched on YouTube).Ironically both men would quite probably have been targets for Juvenal’s barbs had he ever encountered them:Hislop for his hypocrisy and Fry for his vices.
Towards the end of his’ Satires Juvenal sums up the human targets of his vituperative arts as worthy only of ‘laughter and loathing’.This is the common objective of all satire and Juvenal does this rather well (although Auberon Waugh in Hislop’s documentary has a negative reaction to Juvenal’s satires of Roman sexual mores viewing them presumably as being motivated by envy).
O Tempora!O Mores!
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